My name Tammy Muffett
and you don’t know me
but I live on your street
and last night
right after Dean Martin’s song
of wine and roses
and Joe E. Lewis’s joke:
“If I’m standing up, it can’t be me!”
when everybody laughed,
darkness crawled into our house
slinging long ink legs
into the farthest corners,
for my daddy stumbled,
and falling
shattered all our lighted lamps.
I sorrow
But I know not
What is sorrowed for…
The days at hand,
Or the melting away of onetime?
I search
In my sorrow
For what?
What intangible do I seek
Sometimes
A poem
Or just a line or two
–strong wild words—
Will strike at my heart’s door
And shatter the windows of my mind
Such moments I store away
For re-dreaming
When all searching seems fruitless
And all sorrow rootless
What if we should break
a greater barrier
move like light and then
cast upon black sea of space
like pin-points search tri-zillion miles
of night’s glassglow moons
and reddust planets and distant suns
and never voyaging there
find another race?
Will we returning once more adrift
upon this opal starship
sink back to death
and dead men’s worship
make gods for our unholy restless days?
Or might we then make peace
with our aloneness
and new-born and strangely strong
set heart and soul and sinew
on a course sail outward bound
within our inner ways
and like a sleeve indrawn into itself
find that once lost:
the other side of space
A time to remember
Old friends, old days,
Fond thoughts and caring
Make
Happy Holidays
The siren song throbbed
from the violin’s throat
and the great auditorium
misted away
We soared in lyric wonder
to ethereal gardens
of stars and mirrored pools
and white flowers floating
Do you know Camelot–
Shining dream of yore
The realm of magic remembered
In song and lore
Along the cliffs of Cornwall?
Have you known
Guinevere,
King Arthur
The noble knights of the Table Round?
Mysterious Merlin,
Morgan le Fay from the land of Gore?
Lovely Elaine and Lancelot,
Their spirits, it is said
Still haunt the shores
Along the cliffs of Cornwall.
Sometimes, in dreams I drift away
To that far gold place,
Where bright deeds
And dark enchantment
Vied for glory
In the golden hours
In the storied land of Cornwall.
If you should someday pass that way,
Look sharp!
For you may find my heart there
Dwelling well in the time of old
Along the cliffs of Cornwall.
Sunset colorfloats red cloud mists
Above the awesome deep
Night comes
fierce, on panther feet
The distant dark growls closer…closer
Lightning
Electrifying
Terrifying
Skydances fire
Thundergrowl shakes the canyon steeps
Windsnarled rain pounces
Drums upon stonecrumbling paths
The storm searches for prey
Claws at cold iron spiderfrail fences
That perch along the danger rims
Milehigh edges erode a little more
Inching back in secret abandoning
Of the old guard rails
The storm insatiable
Leaps its power to the canyon floor
Obliterates the ribbonriver trail
Unseen the river rushes on
The storm rages
A catalyst
As age-old spirits rise
And new ones in tribal bond
Join ancient bones
To trace the timecarved stone.
There
Before me in beautiful design
Flowers
Rising in the air
I remember now
In later hours
The color, shape and greening line
Of stem and leaf
And this is strange:
I know
That roseate hue was one time born
For just that moment,
That spot to adorn
Beneath an arched stone span
lilies floated
liquescent glow
mystic
rose…blue…white
Entranced
as color flowed
into the heart of memory
for me
I was, by chance,
caught unaware
at dreaming water’s edge
*A painting by Claude Monet